Family session - lots of kids, lots of fun

Now this was fun. :) You can tell from the pictures, right? This family couldn't be more fun to be with - lots of energy, laughing, funny poses, & love. It was pretty cold out but they were great (I was wearing my coat - zipped up - don't worry, I was fine.) We were happy to hurry indoors. Such beautiful children - and getting so grown up too! Thank you thank you - a great afternoon and a great portrait session. (And I have your cd ready..... hooray!)




































If you're interested in more information about a family photography session, my website has lots of info about how I do sessions. Or you can call or email me if you have questions or would just like to chat about it.

I love doing sessions at great places like this, but for lots of other session locations, see this blog page here.

Extended family in Espanola

I'm posting way out of order, but that seems to be how it works for me. :) This weekend I went to Espanola to meet this really neat extended family. They are working with some difficult health issues and it was good timing to get to spend some nice time with them together. Some of them are good friends and some were new acquaintances, and the whole afternoon was a huge pleasure for me. I learned that the dad had built this house himself, and loved hearing some stories of guinea hens, grasshoppers, gardens & orchards. What a beautiful place - I loved the field pictures especially & was so happy it was warm enough to be outside.





Isn't this setting beautiful??? I love it.


Sometimes it takes a silly pose to get those really good smiles. :)






Even the dogs got into the pictures. This one made me wish I'd brought my long lens (and why didn't I??? no good reason) - some great ring chasing!


I also loved this sweet girl and her dog.

Science Night!

What a fun night it turned out to be. I was pretty stressed out the day before, because it looked like we might not get nearly enough volunteers. But happily we did end up having lots of wonderful people willing to help. We had the star lab, telescopes, all the students' projects, and my husband and I put a bunch of experiments together. I was super-busy all night - I took "Junior Scientist" portraits, and did some other things too. So I didn't get a lot of pictures, and I never saw the star lab, or even many of the projects, but I think a friend took pictures of those for me.

This one is one of my favorite experiments. (You might need some background on me - I have a degree in chemical engineering, that's why I feel strongly enough about science night to be the chairperson.) This is cabbage water indicator. When you add an acid to it, the purple turns pink. When you add a base, it turns blue or green. Fun! (The concept of acids and bases is a little tricky to simplify down to the elementary school level...)



This is another great experiment - it's bubbles made using dry ice, so they are filled with fog. It seemed to work really well.


This was a new one to me this year - it's called "elephant's toothpaste" and is a rapid decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. At times they got it to shoot out of the bottle, fun! It looks kind of like the typical baking soda/vinegar volcano reaction, but lasts much longer.


The rest are student portraits I took - they love dressing up like a scientist. I give them the pictures later on. Last year they seemed to enjoy them - hopefully this year will be the same.




My husband donated the welding goggles this year - they were very popular.




When I was stressed out about volunteers I had told myself that I wouldn't do science night again next year. But it ended up being so fun, plus my husband gave me a nice pep talk about how important it is to make science fun for kids, so I'm guessing I'll do it again.

And now... I can go back to photography!

A beautiful 3 month old boy

This darling little guy came for portraits last week - he was so cute! He has beautiful eyes. He had evidently laughed and smiled all the way here, and then once here, I don't know if everything was too different or what, but we really worked for his smiles! He had some amazing grandparents that might have had to go home & take a nap, after all their smile-coaxing. :) And such a neat mom too. Even when he wasn't smiling, he was just beautiful, with his gorgeous eyes wide open and alert.

And - when I told some of you how long your galleries would take, I'd forgotten that this week is Science Night at my kids' school, and I'm the chair. We've been spending a ton of time on it, so it will be a huge relief when it's over. And then I can get back to photography! In the meantime, it's bottles of slime and cabbage juice for me... :)

"Prose For Portraits" - winner announcement!

First of all, this was really hard. We knew it would be, that's why 5 of us photographers wanted to get together, so that we could have 5 yes's instead of just 1. (Knowing these other ladies is such a blessing to me - one of the really good things that happened to me last year was getting to know them.) Reading your heartfelt nominations brought tears to our eyes. I'm sure you can imagine, if you've been following this at all, how hard it would be to choose one family from the nominations we received. And how humbling it is to have gotten the nominations in the first place.

So, this amazing family below really struck a chord with me. This is the Dils family and I know I will love them. Loren, the dad, was diagnosed with ALS a couple of years ago, and a family portrait session now is exactly what I'm all about. I want to use photography to hold onto memories - because my memory is awful, full of holes. And this seems like the perfect opportunity to help someone else with what I would want myself so much if I was in that place.


(picture taken from the ALS Awareness website http://www.alsa.org/ - this is their family with Pete Sampras, how cool is that??? Wish I had taken THIS picture! Posting pictures was Amy's idea... thanks Amy.)

I'm funny about how much I want to talk about people on my blog - privacy is big to me. (And that definitely cramps my blogging style.) I usually won't even put names, but there's no getting around it here. I will talk with them about it because I know he's really involved in raising awareness about Lou Gehrig's disease and probably has some amazing things to share.

So - I will get in touch with you, Dils family - and we can talk. I have lots of ideas and I'm sure you do too. I'm so looking forward to meeting you.

Check out the others - I'm so excited to see their sessions with these other talented photographers.
Monique
Amy
Brianna
Tammy

And thanks again.

Little pink newborn

This was an amazing newborn session. This little girl was a preemie, so she was small - but not tiny, and she was so perfect! She was lying down in her crib, and just drifted... off... to sleep. The perfect baby! (Side note: I had to become a baby sleep expert after my 3 babies, each with a different and difficult sleep problem. Babies falling asleep in their cribs by themselves is EXACTLY what you want.) Then she slept really soundly while we moved her around, posed her, put flowers on her head, etc., and it didn't bother her one bit. What a sweet little girl! I had a really hard time picking which pictures to post - there are going to be a ton of beautiful ones.